Tech Olive

Today, iTunes turns ten years old. It was born on January 9th, 2001 at the MacWorld Expo as just a regular music player that simply played music (how I wish they all just did that now). Even though it’s sluggish and crashes sometimes, we can’t help but salute and wish it ten more healthy years of music playing. Then we’ll give it ten birthday spankins’ and a pinch to grow an inch.

Also, you check out Steve Jobs’ introduction to iTunes back in 2001 after the break. This was when young Jobs actually had some meat on those bones.

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We can’t see we’re one bit surprised, but Apple’s new Mac App Store, which already consists of over 1,000 Apple-made and third-party applications (both free and paid), has gotten over one million downloads within the first 24 hours of its existence. This is mostly thanks to the extremely popular apps and games like Twitter and Angry Birds, which is currently the top-selling game in the App Store right now.

[Press Release]

We kinda new it would be arriving today, but nonetheless, Apple’s Mac App Store is now live thanks to a Snow Leopard update to 10.6.6. Over 1,000 apps are already available including Apple’s own offerings such as the iLife suite broken up into separate applications (iMovie, iPhoto, Garage Band) for $14.99 each. Pages and Keynotes are also available for $19.99 each and Aperture for $79.99. Obviously third-party apps are out too and you’ll even see games like Flight Control HD in there too.

[Press Release]

Remember those annoying AOL promotional CDs that were a dime a dozen back in the day? I know I have a shoe box full of those CDs laying around somewhere. Apparently, AOL spent quite a few dollars on those discs. Former AOL CMO Jan Brandt said that AOL spent over $300 million dollars making and sending out all of those discs. At one point, “50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it.”

But did this marketing campaign work? Yup:

“When we went public in 1992 we had less than 200,000 subscribers; a decade later the number was in the 25 million range.” — AOL co-founder Steve Case.

“We were logging in new subscribers at the rate of one every six seconds.” — AOL CMO Jan Brandt.

via [TechCrunch]

Image Credit: Mars Infomage

Firefox 4 is getting closer and closer to a final version, and since the 7th beta of Firefox 4 is complete as far as the features go, this 8th beta focuses on last-minute bug fixes and touch-ups. Hopefully we should see a release candidate of Mozilla’s new browser real soon and the final version thereafter, which would be a great way to start off the new year.

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Release Notes

Believe it or not, Dropbox has been in beta this whole time. I know, right? Finally, my favorite file-syncing/sharing tool has hit version 1.0 and it brings with it some improvements and new features that we’ve been waiting for. On top of the usual bug fixes (there were hundreds) and speed improvements, Dropbox now has an even easier setup wizard and the long-awaited “selective sync” feature is now available. With this, you “can choose which folders get downloaded to which computers. This saves you time so you don’t have to sync stuff you don’t need.” Hit up the links below to find out more and begin your download. If you don’t have a Dropbox account yet, you can get one here.

[Dropbox 1.0 via The Dropbox Blog]

We knew it’d be here within 90 days of Apple’s Back to the Mac event. At least that’s what Big Steve said and it seems like his word will hold true because Apple will officially launch their Mac App Store on January 6th, which will be right in the middle of CES. Good timing, Apple.

Sadly, the Mac App Store will only work with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and up. Those straggling behind with 10.5 will be SOL.

Naturally, the App Store will work just like how the App Store works on any iDevice.

“The Mac App Store lets you browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, view staff favorites, search categories and read customer ratings and reviews. Like on iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad™, you can purchase, download and install apps in just one click and start using them immediately. Purchased apps can run on all of your personal Macs and updates are delivered directly through the Mac App Store so it’s easy to keep all of your apps up to date.”

There was no word as to how many apps would be available right at launch, but we’re guessing around a few thousand.

[Press Release]

Epic Vid of the Week is a weekly series that showcases an awesome video that we or our readers discover. Some you may have seen before and others you may have not. If you’ve discovered any videos that are worthy of an Epic Vid of the Week title, let us know!

We all should know by now that Google has their own operating system for netbooks called Chrome OS. In this video, we’ll see the Cr-48 netbook get destroyed several times in creative ways, but at the same time we’ll learn about some of the advantages of using a Chrome OS machine.

If you happen to be a Mac user (we know there are a few roaming around here somewhere), you might want to look into getting the Indie Mac Gift Pack and saving yourself a lot of cash. A group of independent Mac developers have joined forces to create a set of six Mac programs for the price of only $60. If you were to buy all of them at regular price you’d be paying $272 for them, so this is quite a deal you’re getting. The programs included in the pack are Delicious Library 2, Acorn 2, MarsEdit 3, Radioshift, SousChef, and Sound Studio 4. The sale still has well over two weeks left, so you have plenty of time to save up that $60.

[Indie Mac Gift Pack via TUAW]

So the day has finally come for the guys at Google to remove the duct tape from their mouths. They announced a few days ago that they were to unveil more details on Chrome OS and today they did just that.

First, they launched their Chrome Web Store, which has been vastly updated from when it was initially unveiled back in May. This is the place where you can get all of your Chrome extensions and themes, as well as different apps and games such as the NY Times, Sports Illustrated and even Plants vs. Zombies. The apps are compatible for both the Chrome browser and Chrome OS.

Google then moved on to the main event and handed out more details of Chrome OS. Frankly, it’s super fast. The company said that the only bottleneck is how fast you can physically navigate with the mouse/trackpad. That’s quite an impressive claim if we do say so ourselves. Google says that all the user’s data is encrypted by default and the operating system itself is loaded onto read-only memory that can’t be tampered without breaking the machine open and tinkering inside. As far as keeping the OS up to date, Google says they’ll send out automatic updates every few weeks to not only keep it up to date, but to hopefully make it faster and faster. The OS can also run in offline mode and any changes that took place will be automatically synced when it’s reconnected to the internet. As far as printing, you won’t be able to physically connect a printer to a Chrome OS machine. Instead, Google wants you using their new Cloud Print service, where you can wirelessly print to your home printer from any location.

Another big surprise is that Google even teamed up with Verizon on the Chrome OS project to bring 100MB of data per month for two years at no cost to every purchaser of a Chrome OS netbook. After the two years are up, you can vouch for a $9.99 plan that will give you unlimited access for a single day contract-free.

Now the sad part. Chrome OS is no where near completion, but we should expect netbooks to ship out sometime in the middle of next year. Acer and Samsung have said that they’re already on board to produce some Intel-based Chrome OS netbook. However, there’s currently one Chrome OS netbook model floating around that will be given to developers and a select few beta testers. The netbook is known as Cr-48 and the maker of this device is currently unknown. However, we noticed that the Caps Lock key is left out, which could only mean that Google doesn’t want us to yell over the internet.

via [Engadget]